


Security

by BenevolentErrancy



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Crash Landing, Gen, Mission Fic, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-27 23:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18200501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BenevolentErrancy/pseuds/BenevolentErrancy
Summary: The middle of an inter-galactic war is not the time for things to go wrong, and yet that is exactly what happens when Commander Shepard finds herself and her ship once again crashing down planet-side.It could be worse. She could be dead. Again. Instead the ship is mostly intact and the world they've landed on isn't immediately hostile. And yet she can't quite shake the feeling that there is something else out there in those jungles, something more sinister than the trees and shadows.





	1. Critical Error

“I don't get it,” Jeff finally huffed, throwing his hands up into the air in frustration.

“Don't much get it down here either. It's like someone put the thrusters down for a nap when we weren't looking,” came Donnelly's voice over the comms.

“What Kenneth _means_ to say is we're still looking into it, Commander,” Daniels corrected quickly after.

“Don't worry, we'll get this sorted, Commander. Engineering signing out,” concluded Adams, leaving the cockpit once more in silence punctuated only by Joker and EDI frantically searching away on their displays, trying to figure out what in the world had just happened.

Shepard just groaned. It was about all she could do, she was no engineer. Just their luck, not only were they in the middle of a galaxy-ending war that they were destined to lose against an enemy bigger than anyone's worst nightmare, but now, on a perfectly routine run, their ship – _her_ ship that took top secret state-of-the-art designs from both the Human Alliance and Turian Hierarchy and then _made it better –_ suddenly stopped working like it was a cheap watch.

“Keep me posted, EDI. I'm going to check on the rest of the ship,” she eventually said in lieu of continuing to hover uselessly around the pilots.

“I will let you know as soon as an explanation presents itself, Shepard,” said EDI as Shepard marched out into the CIC.

The CIC was chaotic. It would likely be even worse down on the engineering levels of the ship, but even here the Normandy's crew was scrambling to respond to warnings, stabilize ship functions, see to the emergency protocols that had been called up in the event of a crash landing, and generally figure out what the _fuck_ had just happened.

For christ's sake they'd just been making a core discharge when all of a sudden they'd gotten warning that the atmospheric stabilizers were failing and ship had started getting sucked into the planet's gravitational pull. The brief sensation of weightlessness as the ship began to fall still made Shepard's stomach turn, memories of another crash, another moment of the artificial gravity failing was, for a moment, almost choking before Shepard slammed it down and leapt to action. She'd be damned if she was losing _another_ ship, and a fiery explosion on some uninhabited world wasn't the way anyone wanted to go. So by the grace of an incredibly skilled crew and some now seriously overtaxed tertiary thrusters, they had managed to slow their descent and limp to the ground, crashing through the tree cover and into the ground with only enough force to send anything and anyone not strapped down tumbling through the ship rather than enough to tear off an engine or leave them in a smouldering crater. Most of the crew had been able to stagger themselves back to their feet quickly enough and either make their way back to their stations or, for a few unfortunate souls, down to the medbay. Though a handful of them that had simply been caught on the ship during the escape from Earth and weren't use to being on a ship that saw a lot of emergency situations were still a little shaken. Traynor had been doing an admiral job hunching over her station trying to regain her footing and her breath when Shepard had stormed up to the cockpit for answers.

Answers that she still didn't have, though Traynor at least was looking a little better.

“Tali, thank goodness,” Shepard said upon seeing the quarian near the elevator with a her omnitool open, in a close discussion with Liara. “Tell me you at least know something.”

“Sorry, Shepard,” Tali said. “Currently it's still mostly speculation, but what we're suspecting at the moment is that it was caused by some sort of outside influence rather than an internal failure.”

“I can assure you that it was not an internal failure,” came EDI's voice over the comms. “I would have noticed anything so critically misaligned and either corrected it or advised docking for repairs long before it could become problematic.”

“Yeah, don't insult her by implying she doesn't know every inch of this ship better than you do your own hand, Commander,” said Joker with a snort. “I'm still saying all it would have taken was some monkey in engineering sitting down on the wrong button...”

“I'm not sure you want to continue down that path,” said Tali.

“Okay, okay! Sheesh, the ladies around are _so_ touchy about their ship...”

“Our best theory,” continued Tali, “is that it was something about the planet itself that caused the failure. All we know for _sure_ though is that it caused a complete shut down of our primary thrusters and drive core, as well as some other non-essential systems.”

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Shepard let out a sigh. “So, bad news is we're currently trapped in on a foreign world in something about as capable of flying as a metal cow, but good news is we're not going to suffocate in the noxious gases of said foreign world. Excellent.”

“Actually,” said EDI, “you'll be happy to know that this is a garden world with a nitrogen and oxygen rich atmosphere; it's perfectly breathable. In fact, I believe this planet is currently under asari consideration for a future colony world, though due to its distance from a mass effect relay or any commercial hubs, this hasn't yet been acted upon.”

“Well that's dandy. Maybe a some local land surveyor can give us a lift then,” said Shepard. “Barring that though – Tali, what are considered 'non-essential' here? Are we a powered down medbay or the ice machine not working?”

“Worst,” said Liara stepping forward. “Shepard, communications appear to be down across the board.”

Shepard gaped. That was... bad. A downed ship wasn't great, but they were also a critical part of the war effort – she'd assumed that if worst came to worst they could hit up a comm buoy and get some engineers sent out to carry out field repairs if need be. If communications were down...

“You're sure about this? It's not just a hiccup from our rough landing?”

Liara shook her head. “My terminal's dark, Shepard. I doubt it needs to be said, but that doesn't happen lightly.”

“Will your work be okay?”

“It should be fine, for a while at least. All my top operatives are aware of the state of the galaxy's communication network and won't be expecting word from me as frequently as they might have before. Plus, if I don't check in within the next few days, Feron is set up to take control of essential operations in my place. But still... I'm an information broker, Shepard, and I can't say I much like being made to feel like I've just been made blind and deaf to the going-ons of the galaxy.”

“Don't worry, we'll get this sorted. If it's just something like atmospheric disturbance then you know Tali and her minions will have us patched and ready to take off as soon as any external damage has been taken care of.”

Liara looked like she was about to say something when the elevator dinged softly and then suddenly the controlled chaos of the CIC was shattered by a _shriek_ , something high-pitched and bone shattering that made every hair on Shepard's body stand on end and made both Tali and Liara physical jump in shock. The best Shepard could describe it as was broken glass being dragged down jagged metal, the sort of noise a horror movie monster made before descending on the unsuspecting victims from the trees. Spinning around to face the elevator though didn't reveal any terrifying aliens breaching the hull, instead there was only Garrus and Ashley marching out.

“Are two okay?” Liara asked, hand still clenched over her chest.

Garrus looked _pissed_ about something, Ashley more... amused? Disgruntled, but amused.

“What happened?” Shepard demanded. “Did you hear that?”

Then, Garrus turned to stare her dead in the eye, opened his mouth and – and another absolutely horrifying noise came out of it. And okay, now that she was listening for it, she could hear noises reminiscent of the turian accent she was use to hearing in her translator: there was a dual-tone warble to it, and the strange reverberation that came from the speech being made deep in the chest and throat rather than the mouth.

Shepard's hand immediately went to touch the little lump behind her right ear, where her translator was implanted. When was the last time she'd had it serviced? No, Cerberus had brought her back to life less than a year ago, there was no way they'd put all that money into her and given her some knock-off translator that'd start acting up after less than a year, unless the fall had damaged it...?

“Please tell me no one else understood that either and that it's not my suit acting up,” Tali said, giving Shepard simultaneous relief and concern.

Why wasn't Garrus being translated?

“Seems to be everyone,” Ashley said. “He nearly gave the entire crew deck a heart attack when he came out of the battery and started yelling about... well, something, I still don't know. Hopefully nothing critical for the ship. No one can understand him.”

Garrus said something, at a slightly lower volume now that he didn't seem to feel inclined to yell his frustration. At this level, it sounded a little less like bullet slugs being put into a meat grinder and more like an actual language – admittedly nothing that had ever come out of a human mouth. The sounds were long and drawn out, with fluctuating intonation, punctuated with strange chirps that Shepard would consider almost bird-like. It was pretty, in a way, though very alien and very unhelpful at the moment.

“You can still understand us, right?” she asked.

Garrus made a curt clicking noise and nodded his head sharply. After a moment, he added something else, looking at Shepard sharply. And suddenly, amid the absolute – quite literal – disaster that today currently was, the humour of this entire ridiculous situation bubbled up in Shepard and she found herself laughing helplessly at the exasperated look on Garrus's face.

“You know, ” she said, trying to catch her breath, “I've had that mouth around some very delicate areas, but like this you kinda sound like you want to kill me.”

At first Garrus looked annoyed, but then the rigid set of his plates eased into something more like affection. Chirping his response, Shepard he could practically _hear_ the snide tone. Probably something along the lines of “I'm considering it at the moment”. She just grinned at him and Garrus huffed exasperatedly if rather fondly.

“EDI, are you able to understand any of this?” asked Tali, who had turned away, rather flustered, at Shepard's comment.

“I'm afraid I cannot,” was EDI's reply. “It's... odd. Even if there was some translator error, I should be able to understand him no matter what. I have a very thorough understanding of several thousand turian languages and dialects saved to my hard storage – something that should be accessible with or without extranet or comm access. Yet somehow this information is being... blocked. It still exists, but I am unable to access it.”

“Could that be related to our communications failure?” Shepard asked. “After all, EDI is the ship – if something in the AI Core was damaged...”

“Being unshackled it does mean that EDI has almost unlimited access to the ships functions,” Tali mused. “If something in the AI Core was disabled... It could have happened prior to the crash, and cause the thruster failure, or else it could be independent of the thrusters but got something knocked loose during the crash...”

“It seems unlikely,” said EDI. If an AI could, she sounded rather... uneasy at the thought. “I don't detect any technical failings within the Core, but if something were locked, like when I was still shackled by Cerberus, I may not be able to notice... However, that wouldn't explain the translators. The ship and the translators work independently of one another – and though your translators are unable to store as many languages as I hold, they general have at least all the primary languages and dialects of the known, space-faring species that interact in Council space even if they aren't able to connect to the extranet for more nuanced understandings.”

“Okay,” Shepard said slowly, mulling over what this new information. “So we have a crashed ship, non-functional thrusters, no communications, translator issues, an AI that may or may not be experiencing technical issues, and, oh right, an intergalactic war. Tali? Making sure EDI's okay is going to be a priority – do you think you and her could do a full shakedown of the AI Core and look for anything that might be wrong, whether that's a technical problem or a power cord that got jiggled during the landing? Joker, hold yours and EDI's stations, keep me updated on what you figure out. Engineering?” she called, opening her comm channel to include the lower deck. “I want full hands on deck figuring out what went wrong and, most importantly, _how to fix it_. Have a secondary team standing by, I'm going to send out a ground team to inspect the crash site and once we set up a parameter I want teams outside and prepared to give me a full rundown of the damages we sustained and an estimation on how long it'll take to fix it. Traynor!” she called across the CIC. “I imagine you already know everything there is to know about our communication issues, you and Liara get that sorted, use whatever team you need to get it done. Also, see if you can't look into this translator bug. Garrus, I know your not exactly engineering but you understand the power drawing of this ship inside and out after all your bloody calibrations so I want you down there assisting engineering as best you can. Ashley, get to the shuttle bay, make sure everything's okay down there, then get suited up with James, the three of us are going to hit the ground. Move out, people, we have a war to get back into, we wouldn't want the Reapers getting lonely!”


	2. Repulsing

As far as planets went, there were certainly worse ones to have landed on. Like Alchera, a frozen wasteland incapable of supporting life with a methane-ammonia atmosphere. In fact, given that their ship was currently entrenched in the earth and surrounded by the shattered remains of the trees it had slammed through in its landing, they had gotten remarkably lucky. While not a widely populated system, beyond some astroid mining clusters and a couple small colony worlds, one of which was little more than a military outpost, it wasn't an unusual stop for people travelling using FTL from its neighbour, as the Normandy had been. Given the length of that jaunt, most people then stopped at the only gas giant in the system, a perfect place to decharge a drive core. There had, however, been travel advisor warnings being broadcasted that it had become increasingly sporadic and prone to dangerous flare ups that could decimate a ship that was orbiting for decharging. Taking this under consideration, Joker had detoured them to the next largest planet; while it would take a number more hours to flush the drive core charge here than on the gas giant, it may have just saved all their lives. If the ship failure had been something internal, they could very well have been plummeting into a gas giant''s core right now. Shepard would take a slightly muggy jungle any day of the week.

Though muggy it was. The amour helped, as it was designed to keep its wearer comfortable in considerably more trying climates than this, but unless she wanted to put on a full breather helmet she could feel the perspiration pasting her hair to her skull and dripping down her neck. And honestly, though so far their internal comm lines seemed to be working – at least at limited range, they'd been radioing back to the ship the further out they go, to make sure they held steady – Shepard would rather have her head free and be able to talk to her crew one-on-one without relying on comms. If their translators kept acting up, Shepard wasn't sure what she would do. She knew James spoke Spanish mainly, but she suspected he had a passable grasp of of English, but she and Ashley would have a problem – she knew Ash spoke a colony dialect she could never remember the name of, one that had evolved from Hindi, neither of which Shepard had the slightest grasp of. Besides for them and her obviously alien crew members like Liara and Tali, how many other human crew members were there that spoke a different native language? Translators were crucial for the operations of a ship like the Normandy and while not being able to communicate with Garrus was a blow, she could only pray it didn't get worse.

“Scanners aren't picking shit up,” said Vega, smacking at his arm as if he hoped that would make his omnitool read better. “It thought Ashley had died there or something for a second there, and its wildlife readings are all over the charts.”

“It's gotta be the same thing that's messing up the communication lines,” said Ashley as they trekked further into the trees – still within sight of the ship, but with enough distance that they would have a reasonable parameter. “A little bump like we had on the way down isn't going to cause everyone's scanners to start acting up.”

“You call _that_ a bump? What are you Spectres made of, rubber?”

“Some sort of atmospheric disturbance still seems the most likely,” Shepard said. “Or even if it could have something to do with the planet's magnetic fields – do we know anything about this planets core?”

“I don't know,” said Ash with a shrug as they stopped to plant another repulsor node. “You'd have to ask EDI. Or Liara, if it turns out the issue is something wrong with the AI Core and that robot body starts trying to kill us again.”

Shepard snorted. “You're never going to let that go, are you?”

“Well, maybe if–” She cut off when suddenly James raised a fist level to his head – _freeze_. Ashley and Shepard did just that, hands immediately going to their guns, eyes and ears keen.

“Did you hear that?” James asked.

“I didn't hear anything unusual,” said Ashley, staring ahead in the direction James was looking. “Just, leaves and wind and those weird chittering animals. What'd you hear?”

“I don't know...” said James. “Maybe nothing. Probably just another animal or something. Just sounded weird. Like a whistle, maybe? But not?”

“Could be some sort of bird?” Shepard asked, though it seemed unlikely. This planet's gravitational pull was a stronger than Earth's – not unbearably so, but enough so that the exertion was noticeable even on their patrol, and it seemed unlikely at that there be many flying creatures on this world. Still, it could be any other number of animals. So far they'd only seen some sort of low-standing, furry creature, that looked a bit like a giant, squished ferret with two pairs of legs too many, and some sort of scaly, long-limbed quadruped that swung deftly among the thick tree growth, chattering loudly and staring at the humans with enormously wide, black eyes. So far neither animals had seemed particularly keen on attacking, but neither had made any sound resembling a whistle either.

James was just shaking his head. “No idea, Lola. I thought... I don't know. When I heard it, I thought I saw something out there for a moment. Something... shiny? Just a flash of something silver out among the trees.”

“Could be anything, really,” said Ashley. “You never know all the animals on these outlying worlds until they're jumping at your face.”

“Ash is right. It's probably nothing to worry about, but we'll know for sure once we finish the parameter.”

Despite this, despite the fact that they were all trained marines with considerable fire-power that regularly fought an species that had been destroying galactic life for untold numbers of millennia, they finished the walk around the parameter in relative silence, a certain tension in the air. Anticipation. They were all waiting, listening. There was nothing that sounded at all like a whistle though – and whether that was more or less concerning was anyone's guess – and nothing in the trees that seemed to flash silver. Too many horror movies, Shepard told herself. Give her overwhelming odds against a merc band and she wouldn't flinch, but then make it feel like a horror movie had strolled into real life and tiptoed across the back of her neck and suddenly out came the goosebumps.

The last repulsor node was secured into the ground and the with the press of a button on her omnitool they came to life, letting off a very faint hum as the mass effect field rose between them, encircling the camp. It wasn't anything heavy duty, but it was standard protocol for being downed on a potentially hostile planet; the barrier was just enough that it tended to make wild animals uncomfortable approaching it, encouraging them to avoid it or circle it. This way the engineers would be safe to come out and start inspecting the ship without needing to worry about being charged by this planet's equivalent of a cougar or something.

Stepping back onto the ship washed whatever lingering, ill-at-ease feelings from Shepard's shoulders. She was a city kid, an earth-born brat who'd grown up on the streets of a megacity; she'd only been passingly acquainted with trees until she'd started going through Alliance field training. By now she was use to traversing isolated planets and all the wilderness they had to offer, but she would always feel most comfortable in the city, among streets and people and noise – chaotic predictability, unlike the mysteries hidden out among dark leaves and dead survival instincts. Back in the shuttle bay of her ship, surrounded by its comforting thrum, any thoughts of horror movies were shed. She still had engineering teams to organize and dispatch, and undoubtedly a stack of progress reports from every ship sectors to look through already if she wanted to get caught up on the situation.

 


	3. Contact

Shepard waited impatiently for the scan to finish so she could leave the war room and get back to the rest of her damn ship. She tried to remind herself that this  _was_ in fact, important. She had access to incredibly sensitive galactic information – information that, in the wrong hands, could quite literally topple empires. If an enemy somehow got onto the ship, like an indoctrinated agent, their death warrant could be signed. Of course, the drama with her  _clone_ hadn't exactly eased security, nor would she want it to. But still, it was beyond frustrating to have to stand there tapping your foot while restless energy just built further and further up inside you while you waited to get  _back to work_ . 

While the war table was hardly receiving new updates at the moment, she had been at the Quantum Entanglement Communications terminal, hoping she'd be able to get in contact with Hackett – it, after all, didn't rely on comm buoys. This had been considered a last resort but after almost a day and still no progress being made on getting the drivers back online, she wanted to at least let him know that they weren't currently on track with their latest mission. However the QEC was a crapshoot at best, there were _reasons_ they contacted her. After all, a QEC terminal was stuck in a single point and required the recipient to be there, waiting for the call. With Traynor monitoring QEC activity, as long as Shepard was on the ship she could be reached by Hackett, but Hackett obviously hadn't been anywhere near his QEC terminal and according to the intergalactic clocks it was likely getting late enough where he was stationed that she wouldn't have much luck reaching him for the next few hours and would have better luck turning her attention elsewhere. Of course, even here things were winding down for the night. It was still early for most of the people working this cycle, but the planet's sun had set and starship crews were used to needing to switch their sleeping schedules to suit any given planet's day-night cycle during stays. Outside work had wrapped up over an hour ago, as soon as it had gotten too dark to see without flood lights.

You wouldn't know people were settling in for the night though by the fact that Shepard had no sooner stepped out of the scanner and into the CIC than Traynor had appeared at her shoulder as if it were noon and she had been impatiently waiting for Shepard to get to the office.

“Commander! Commander, I was hoping to ask you about something – sorry, it's been hard to catch you with, well, everything going on.”

“Please tell me it's good news, Traynor,” said Shepard wearily.

“Well... I mean, I'm not even _certain_ it's news, but... well, I thought it seemed a bit suspicious, ma'am. See, I've been trying to track our message logs, to see if I could pinpoint the exact moment we lost connectivity, and I ended up revisiting one of our recent, ship-wide messages that was received – that gas giant's warning not to enter orbit to release core charge.”

Shepard raised her brows. “Okay. What about it? You don't think it was... what, some sort of virus?”

“No... well, I wouldn't want to _discredit_ that possible theory, I'm not really an expert in cyberwarfare – that's more EDI's cup of tea – but... I guess I was wondering, do we know for a fact that it's the _planet_ that's jamming our systems?”

Shepard felt a chill settle over her. Not dread, exactly, more... anticipation. An ice cold, razor sharp sort of anticipation, that of a budding realization and the desire for her to reach for a gun. “What's your theory, Traynor? Tell me what you think, if not the planet. We have no record of pirating activity in this system after all, and all the big player merc bands that could have a chance of disabling a ship like the Normandy are currently marching under my banner.” She wasn't challenging Traynor, not really – Traynor had not yet failed her, and Shepard was eager to hear what discover Traynor had seemed to pull out of thin air.

“R-right...” Traynor said, faltering, until Shepard nodded at her encouragingly. “It's just, that warning didn't match... well, it's hard to describe it _exactly_ but think of it like digital watermarks. Different organizations will use different types and degrees of encryption, will code messages slightly differently, will leave... different fingerprints, in a sense. Especially on official messages that are being broadcasted to a wide audience, like travel advisories – they're 'watermarked' in ways that show that they're official. That's why it's much easier for a merc to fake, say, a distress signal than a fake travel advisory – distress signals are on unsecure open broadcast channels in the hopes of _anyone_ picking them up, and they come from so many different races, ship-types and organizations that there's really no regulation. Unlike a Citadel sponsored travel advisory.”

“You think that was a fake advisory?”

“Well... yes. I do. And _maybe_ it was faked for a noble reason, maybe that planet really was unstable and the locals were trying to protect people but couldn't get Citadel authorities to listen... but, well, it's just that it's _very, very_ close to a real advisory. It's an almost perfect fake, Commander. If you weren't looking... well, I wouldn't have noticed the difference if I hadn't been digging. Even EDI let it pass without noticing. So either Citadel authorities are getting sloppy, or we have some good samaritan miners who are _really_ good at mimicking highly encrypted official travel advisories, or...”

“Or there's someone else there that would have a good reason for not wanting you near that gas giant,” Shepard finished, realization dawning. “Someone who might just know that a lot of people stop there to discharge, and who might just know the next best planet to do so on. ...You think that we were lured here.”

Traynor took a deep breath. “I couldn't say for sure, Commander, but... yes. I do.”

With a crackle of static that made Shepard and Traynor start, the voice of an engineer came over the comms. “Commander. I think you should probably come see this.”

Shepard didn't hesitate for a moment. “Traynor, get a hold of anyone in my ground crew who isn't immediately busy with something, I want them out of the airlock in five.”

-

When Shepard had first stepped out onto the planet's surface with Ashley and James, it hadn't honestly struck her as that unnerving. It's vegetation was dense and it seemed to glisten in the sun from moisture – whether it rained here frequently or if it was just from the humidity, Shepard couldn't say. She'd been cautious, as you were on a new planet, but by and large she hadn't found it intimidating. Now she found herself thinking about James' mystery noise again and her discussion with Traynor as she stepped into the blackness – a blackness so complete that it barely even seemed touched by the trail of work lights leading from the airlock around the ship to where an engineering team was station. The light did nothing but enhance the darkness. With Liara, Ashley and James at her heels, she turned the corner of the ship, towards its back, and ran into the engineering team.

There were four of them on the team out there and, according to them, they had come out here to get a manual reading of what the ships emissions were when they had seen it.

It took a moment of her eyes getting use to the darkness to see what “it” was.

“ _Goddess_.”

Shepard found she agreed. The first thing she realized was, besides for the shuffling of nocturnal activities, that there was a silence all around them. The repulsors and their barrier were no longer running. Someone had shut them down. It took a moment longer for her to realize what it was that had scared the engineers: with its inky green scales almost swallowed up by the night's shadows hung one of the tree reptiles, barely visible. It's spindly limbs drooped limply and its black eyes stared out at Shepard, no longer inquisitive and wary, but instead simply blank, void. It was the thick, metal bolt that had been driven straight through the creature's neck though, securing it to a tree within parameter, and coating the animal, the tree, and the ground beneath it in dark patches of blood, that chilled Shepard's bones though.

“What does it mean, Commander,” one of the engineers asked. She was looking up at Shepard with a pale, unsettled face, eyes almost as wide as that poor dead animal's. It was strange, being in a situation like this with people other than her ground crew – while unnerving, Liara, James, and Ashley all stood steady, hands on their weapons. These engineers though, while they might be be able to keep their heads level like no one else when they ran face-to-face with an overheating core or had to dodge out of a solar system with Reapers on their tail, they weren't trained for personal combat.

They weren't trained to see something innocent hanging dead from a tree and have to deal with the realization that _something_ out there was smart and that something wanted them to know that it knew how to kill.

“Now we return to the ship,” said Shepard calmly. “You have all the readings you need? Good. You did good out here. You have important work to see to on the lower decks and we're all going to need a rest soon.”

“But what about...” another engineer started as they began to return to the airlock.

“Something thinks it's being clever,” said Shepard evenly. “It think it's a big, strong bastard capable of giving some unsuspecting civilian ship a scare. Well, we're not a civilian ship, and we don't scare that easily. We also have better things to do than play in the trees with some small, sad people that think they're tough – we've got _Reapers_ to kill. I'll see this dealt with in the morning.”

While Shepard's focus was on keeping an eye on the engineers – making sure they were escorted back safely and that her body didn't betray anything but absolute confidence – she missed the bright, pinprick eyes watching from scarcely ten feet off in the thick darkness of the trees. The whistling clicks, almost below the human range of hearing, wasn't recognized as anything other than the wind.

Once Shepard and her crew were back in the perceived safety of the ship, flooded with lights and warmth that couldn't penetrate the jungle, several somethings began moving deeper into the jungle, never “away”, exactly, simply deeper.

 


End file.
